Number crunchers
Up till 3 am working out an estimate of every single part that goes into building a Herreshoff 12 1/2. It’s an interesting process… stare at the drawings, see another place for a fastener, see another operation you didn’t think about before. Give it a rest and something else just appears in consciousness, like looking at an optical illusion where suddenly you get the perspective shift that reveals the alternate picture.
Bacchus, or 2 lovers kissing? Hmmm.
One of the things that magically appeared in my consciousness this afternoon was caulking. Right, I’d built the boat in my head, and forgot to caulk it. That could cause a problem. Especially since I’d then have to build the argument between myself and the client in my head as well.
Today we went through how to work out a basic shop fee, the fee that you have to charge simply to keep the doors open, and used that to come up with an estimate as to how much it would cost to build a 12 1/2. It was an interesting exercise, particularly because it required us to once again build the boat in our heads, but this time focus on how long the various aspects of the project should take us. And this time, we came up with our figures in about 45 minutes of thinking and writing. Some folks just scratched down their ideas with paper and pencil. I went the other direction, breaking down each major operation into a series of steps and trying to get a sense of how long each would take.
Our estimates had a lot of variation as one might expect. We ranged from a low of 831 hrs (me) to a high of 1843 hours. The mean was about 1200 hrs. Here you can see the various hourly estimates coupled with our shop fees to get a total boat cost.
Not too many folks are going to be buying a Herreshoff 12 1/2 for $63,680, unless it comes with a mooring, a crew, an open bar, and a guarantee of fine sailing weather. Still, I was impressed that we could whip something up in such a short time using just what we remembered about building Beetle Cats, or from conversations with other builders, or satellite transmissions though your teeth…
The real value of this exercise for me has been the repeated process of thinking long and hard about what goes into every step of building a boat. I can start to feel the sequence falling into place. When it comes time to estimate a project for real I feel like I’ve got a little better handle on the things that are easy to miss.
And speaking of 12 1/2’s… In case you don’t read the comments in this blog, Bob Easton sent along a link to his work modelling this exact boat in 1/16th scale. Woah… amazing stuff.
Oh, and in case you don’t get the scale, here’s another shot from his site.
It’s really incredible work that he’s doing. I think he’s got a much better handle on his materials costs than we do, but he probably blows his budget on reading glasses.
Tomorrow we work on contracts, and Friday we tie it all together by coming up with a project estimate in contract form. We’ll present these to the class, and see how close we’re coming to some sort of agreement about how much a new build 12 1/2 might run.
And next week… hands on boat work begins. I’m looking forward to being back on the shop floor.